1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for creating, editing, printing, and displaying works of authorship, including screenplays, books, speeches, multimedia works and other works, that contain components that have an associated presentation metric.
2. Background Art
Outlining tools exist to help in the creation and organization of works such as books, reports, articles, memoranda, letters, etc. that consist primarily of textual content. Outlining tools allow an author to organize his or her thoughts into a logical outline structure that forms the basis for the work that is being created. The outline typically consists of a list of various levels of headings and subheadings that identify the major and minor content pieces of the work and the sequence in which they are to be arranged. An outline is similar in appearance and structure to a table of contents. It provides an overview of the topic areas and sequential structure of the work. A common process for creating a work is to create an outline of the headings and subheadings for the work as a whole and then to generate the content for each heading and subheading.
Certain types of primarily textual (or other) works may have a presentation dimension associated with them referred to here as a xe2x80x9cpresentation metricxe2x80x9d. Examples of presentation metrics include elapsed time, reading time, elapsed pages, proportion of story completed, chapter position, and others. An example of a primarily textual work that has a time based presentation metric associated with it is a screenplay. A typical screenplay for a commercial feature film is approximately 120 pages in length, with each page representing approximately one minute of screen time. The presentation metric for each page of a screenplay is therefore approximately one minute. A screenplay is often divided into acts, scenes, and actions and dialogues within a scene. The presentation metric for each of these components may be defined as the screen time allocated to these components when filmed. Another example of a work containing time-dimensioned textual components is a written speech. The presentation metric for a written speech may be defined as the time it takes for the speech to be verbally delivered. The presentation metric for a page of a written speech depends on the speaking and delivery style and tempo of the person delivering the speech.
In creating a work that includes textual content that has an associated presentation metric, it would be useful to be able to visualize the work from a presentation-time point of view. That is, it would be useful to be able to see how the various parts of the work will appear in time when they are presented in the intended manner. This is particularly useful for a work such as a screenplay for a typical commercial feature film, in which certain types of actions, events and/or transitions are expected to occur at certain time-points within the presentation metric of the film. It would also be useful to be able to edit and manipulate the time representation of such works to allow an author to change the temporal relationship of parts of the work while maintaining the integrity and consistency of the work as a whole.
The invention comprises a computer-based system for creating, editing, printing, and displaying works such as, for example, books, screenplays, speeches, or multimedia works, that include textual components that have a time dimension associated with them. In one or more embodiments of the invention, the time dimension is the time that passes when the component is delivered to the intended audience. This kind of time dimension is referred to as a presentation metric. For example, if the work is a novel, a component may be a chapter and the associated presentation metric may be defined as an average or expected time for a reader to read the chapter. In another example, if the work is a screenplay, a component may be a scene and the associated presentation metric may be defined as the duration of the scene in the film that is made from the screenplay, also referred to as the xe2x80x9cscreen time.xe2x80x9d In one or more embodiments, the components of a work are referred to as xe2x80x9cevents.xe2x80x9d The invention creates graphical representations of events that visually display the presentation metric of the events and the temporal relationships between events. Events may be subsets of other events. In one or more embodiments, the events are represented as bars arranged and registered along a time line. In one or more embodiments, the length of each bar represents the presentation metric of the event represented by the bar. In one or more embodiments, the bars also display and allow the editing of the textual content of the event. In one or more embodiments, the time lines of the invention may be oriented horizontally, vertically, or at any other desired orientation.
In one or more embodiments, the work is a screenplay in text form, the events include acts, scenes, actions and dialogues, and the presentation metric of each event is the screen time of the event. In one or more embodiments, the work is a book, the events are chapters, and the presentation metric is an average time it takes for a reader to read the chapter. Note that events could be pages, paragraphs, sentences or any other suitable division and need not have a direct translation to actual time. In these embodiments, the invention provides a user who is creating a book or screenplay with a visual, editable overview of the relationships of the individual events to each other and to the presentation metric for the work as a whole.
In one or more embodiments, events may be arranged in one or more hierarchies of events. In this embodiment, changes to the time dimensions of events at one level in a hierarchy are appropriately reflected in the time dimensions of events in other levels of the hierarchy.
One or more embodiments of the invention allow associations between events and certain user selected characteristics, features, resources, concepts or other items or things (collectively referred to as xe2x80x9cstructuresxe2x80x9d) to be displayed. In one or more embodiments, xe2x80x9cstructural tracksxe2x80x9d are displayed, each of which re presents one or more of such structures. These structural tracks are displayed parallel to the event time line. Links identify events that have a relationship to the structure represented by the structural track. For example, a structure may represent a particular character, and links may indicate events in which the character appears. Other examples of structures include a musical theme that accompanies certain events, clues that are presented in an event (if the work is a mystery, for example), physical items featured in an event, a geographical location of an event, whether an event is a flashback or occurs in the present time, the use of special effects, and anything else that the author of a work may wish to associate with the events of the work. Structures may include, for example, any and all of the xe2x80x9cappreciationsxe2x80x9d described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,734,916, assigned to assignee of the present invention and incorporated by reference herein.
Any number of structural tracks may be displayed. In one or more embodiments, the events linked to a particular structure can be identified by enabling a highlighting function of the relevant structural track. By doing so, events that have an association with that structure are highlighted or displayed, while the remaining events may be dimmed or not displayed.